Suzi Ragsdale’s exquisite new EP, Ghost Town, arrives at a pivotal time in our history, when personal contact is limited yet intimate connections remain as important as ever. With this fully original six-track collection, the veteran singer-songwriter and native Nashvillian’s first release in a decade, the themes of connection and transformation are explored with refreshing and reassuring wisdom, compassion and humor. Delivered in a wild-honey-coated voice that echoes her Southern roots, and helmed by British-born producer Sam Frank, Ghost Town is quintessential Americana, an all-encompassing expression of the mind-body-spirit connection that speaks right to the heart. That’s hardly surprising for a woman whose passions – music, cooking and yoga – also feed the soul.

 “I’ve always tried to inject something positive into the songs I write,” says Ragsdale. “Even if it’s a sad song, there’s a redeeming, ‘Hey, it’s all OK’ quality.  Yoga is compatible with my view of the world and my writing has to be compatible with my view of the world. It needs to mean something to me or I’ll just not write that song.”

The daughter of Country Music Hall of Fame legend Ray Stevens, Suzi was in kindergarten when her voice was first featured on a No. 1 record, as part of the chorus on her dad’s inspirational Grammy-winning hit, “Everything Is Beautiful.” She began recording children’s albums for the classroom at age 10 and singing on demos for other writers when she was just 13. “Every chance I got, I was in the recording studio, sitting on the console, listening,” she recalls. “I was doing what was right for me at the time,” she says. “Now I know I was on the right path, however long and winding it may have seemed.”

That long and winding path includes having supplemented her music-related income by becoming a certified fitness instructor and personal trainer through the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America (AFAA), since then teaching group cardio and weight training classes at health clubs in Nashville and Memphis, while back in the recording studio she was an in-demand backing vocalist, heard on more than 60 albums by an impressive array of artists that includes Loretta Lynn, Pam Tillis, Kathy Mattea, Suzy Bogguss, Ian Tyson, Tom Paxton, Watermelon Slim, Hank Williams, Jr., Jo-El Sonnier and many others. As a songwriter, artists including Dierks Bentley, Miranda Lambert, Jamey Johnson, Rodney Crowell, Hal Ketchum, Lari White, Darrell Scott, Anne Murray, Billy Dean, rock duo Nelson and more have cut her material. She also toured as a member in the bands of iconic songwriters Guy Clark and Darrell Scott, the latter of whom produced 1998’s Future Past, her solo debut album, and she recorded a pair of duet LPs with her ex-husband, Verlon Thompson, before releasing a pair of eclectic EPs, Best Regards and Less of the Same, produced by Tim Lauer. While the release of her solo material hasn’t been extremely prolific, it has always been wide-ranging and impressive, and her latest is no exception.

Ghost Town kicks off with the rollicking and infectious “Bonfire,” an ode to de-cluttering and simplifying both the mind and the home, which ends with a celebratory dance around the flickering pyre, while on the EP’s affecting title track, lingering memories of “fairytales, fantasies and lies” haunt the present. Throughout the instantly memorable “Loved and Won,” Ragsdale recites a litany of famous couples, both real and fictional (“Johnny and June, Scarlett and Rhett/ Yoko and John, Romeo and Juliet” in the opening verse) and turns the oft-heard “it’s better to have loved and lost” on its ear. The percussive and thoroughly uplifting “Live Until You Die” assures us in its opening line that even the daily rigors of “Eat, drink, sleep, wash, rinse, repeat” are preferable to the alternative. 

To more easily understand the naturalistic sentiment behind “Wildflowers,” the sole co-written track on the EP – penned with producer Sam Frank – perhaps it’s helpful to visualize the six acres of unspoiled property the artist lives on 30 miles west of Nashville, and to take special note of the Sioux teepee situated on the far side of a nearby creek. With room for 10 yoga mats around a fire pit, it’s here where she offers yoga instruction, which she has been doing since obtaining her 2007 certification as a yoga teacher. With instruction in California from yoga guru Steve Ross, formerly a touring musician with rock acts including Fleetwood Mac, Men at Work and the Beach Boys, Suzi’s teaching methods, like Ross’s, incorporate music, fusing two of her great passions, while she also continues to explore her third great love: cooking. As witnessed through her official website, www.suziragsdale.com, her charm and humor are key ingredients not only in Ragsdale’s songs but in her recipes as well. “It’s all therapeutic,” she notes. “I’m just trying to tap into what’s good and true.” 

Ghost Town closes, appropriately enough, with “The Ending,” a candidly poignant track in which she muses that when it comes to spoilers, whether they reveal the last chapter of a book or the inevitable dissolution of a marriage, ignorance of the outcome might prove the more blissful option. Driven by a swirling, heart-piercing melody, it is a prime example of the mind-body-spirit connection found in Suzi Ragsdale’s inspiring and memorable work.

“I want it to make me feel something,” she says of her goal with each new composition. “If I get enough time away from it and then let it surprise me again, to give me goosebumps and make me cry happy tears with the pleasure of having done it, that’s what I’m going for. If I’m going to ask other people to spend their time listening to me I want it to be good enough to do that.”